War surtax: 'Pay as you fight'

After months of listening to conservatives caterwaul over deficits and health care, senior House Democrats want a graduated surtax on individuals and corporations to pay for another big drain on the treasury: the Afghanistan war.

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Three full committee chairmen — including the House’s top tax writer, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) — are backing the initiative together with the chair of the party caucus, Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), and close allies of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The speaker has been silent thus far, and many dismiss the idea as more rhetoric than real legislation. But with President Barack Obama due to make a final decision soon on adding more U.S. troops, the initiative testifies to the growing restlessness among Democrats over the costs of the American commitment in Afghanistan.

Today’s jobless rate — far worse than during the height of the Vietnam War in the '60s — adds to this angst. And Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), who oversees the Pentagon’s budget and supports the surtax, went so far as to send Obama last month a copy of Yale historian Paul Kennedy’s “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.”

U.S. military spending in Afghanistan had reached $3.6 billion a month this summer — or more than $43 billion a year, according to estimates by the Congressional Research Service. And in the course of meeting with lawmakers, Obama has used a rough measuring stick that every 1,000 troops added will add another $1 billion to this annual basis.

“It’s conditional, but if we’re going to add 40,000 troops, people ought to know what the costs are,” said House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.). “It’s important for people to understand how these wars are adding to our deficits.”

Dubbed the “Share the Sacrifice Act,” the six-page bill exempts anyone who has served in Iraq or Afghanistan since the 2001 terrorist attacks as well as families who have lost an immediate relative in the fighting. But middle-class households earning between $30,000 and $150,000 would be asked to pay 1% on top of their tax liability today — a more sweeping approach than many Democrats have been willing to embrace.

By comparison, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) has spoken only of an added tax on the wealthy. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) remains hesitant about any surtax to cover the war: “Someone has to demonstrate how it can be done,” he told POLITICO in a statement Monday.